Our view shares some aspects with the subsymbolic approach
to cognition (though without its commitments to specific neural
network mechanisms and related mathematical formalisms). The subsymbolic approach as formulated by
Smolensky [1]}, for instance, sees the value
of a Marr-style top-down formulation of inference and acknowledges that inferential tasks can be
usefully described at multiple levels of abstraction. Importantly, however,
processes of implementation play a central role in subsymbolic theory,
which admits that the “lower” mechanistic level and the higher-level
descriptions mutually restrict each other and so in a way
have to be studied together. The same is true in our case.
